"...Facebook did not set out to increase political polarization and empower bad actors to undermine democracy, but this outcome was inevitable. It was the result of countless Facebook decisions, all made in pursuit of greater profits. In order to maximize its share of human attention, Facebook employed techniques designed to create an addiction to its platform. It deploys digital trackers to monitor and monetize the digital lives of its users. As a result, Facebook has emerged as one of the most profitable companies in our economy.

Facebook has created bubbles around users that contrary ideas — and even facts — cannot penetrate, empowering groups of like-minded people to share emotionally charged ideas on a platform that is vulnerable to exploitation by bad actors.

...The harm goes way beyond the Russians and the election, and it is ongoing. Significantly, Facebook takes the position that its only policing obligation is to support community standards on issues such as displays of nudity. As a result, it was not even looking for, much less working to prevent, interference in our elections. In retrospect, Facebook’s architecture and the lack of surveillance invited malicious interference in the 2016 election. For a trivial sum, the Russians were able to wreak havoc. A congressional committee is investigating to what extent they exploited other platforms — 4chan, Reddit, Twitter and Google — but so far it appears Facebook was the one that did the most damage..."

McNamee is also a touring musician, first as a founding member of the Flying Other Brothers, and more recently in that group's follow-on band, Moonalice. Between the two groups, McNamee estimated in April 2009 that he has played 800 shows.,[4] in an April 13, 2009 article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

...McNamee is the co-writer of the Moonalice song "It's 4:20 Somewhere".[11] In August 2012 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced that the digital logs for "It’s 4:20 Somewhere" had been acquired for its library and archives, describing the Moonalice logs as helping to "...tell the story of music’s digital revolution; specifically the rise of direct-from-artist (DFA) distribution. Moonalice is the first band without a label to achieve one million downloads of a song from its own servers, direct-from-artist. “It’s 4:20 Somewhere” has been downloaded over 4.6 million times"

[...]

“The best way I can describe it is, having a diaper on and never changing it. And just sitting in that diaper the whole year.”N.Y. Jet, Brandon Marshall. Speaking of last season’s disastrous 5 -11 record

#4

Said it before and I'll say it again: dude is going down in history as one of our generation's biggest pieces of shit.

But not sure what that second link has to do with anything?

The second link was to establish the author of the USA Today opinion piece's bona fides.

“The best way I can describe it is, having a diaper on and never changing it. And just sitting in that diaper the whole year.”N.Y. Jet, Brandon Marshall. Speaking of last season’s disastrous 5 -11 record

#5

I guess I give Zuck some credit for all the networking potential Facebook has created, I guess, but I dunno how much of it is creditable specifically to him or anything he's done.

I mean, Craigslist has massive networking potential as well, but you don't see Craig hoarding our personal info to sell to marketers so he can buy himself a mega estate in Hawaii. You don't see Craig harboring echo chambers of misinformation cuz its profitable for him. You don't see Craig bombing us with useless spam about the top 20 spookiest places on earth, number 9 is so scary, OMG!

#15

I led Facebook’s efforts to fix privacy problems on its developer platform in advance of its 2012 initial public offering. What I saw from the inside was a company that prioritized data collection from its users over protecting them from abuse. As the world contemplates what to do about Facebook in the wake of its role in Russia’s election meddling, it must consider this history. Lawmakers shouldn’t allow Facebook to regulate itself. Because it won’t.

Facebook knows what you look like, your location, who your friends are, your interests, if you’re in a relationship or not, and what other pages you look at on the web. This data allows advertisers to target the more than one billion Facebook visitors a day. It’s no wonder the company has ballooned in size to a $500 billion behemoth in the five years since its I.P.O.

The more data it has on offer, the more value it creates for advertisers. That means it has no incentive to police the collection or use of that data — except when negative press or regulators are involved. Facebook is free to do almost whatever it wants with your personal information, and has no reason to put safeguards in place.

...In one instance, a developer appeared to be using Facebook data to automatically generate profiles of children, without their consent. When I called the company responsible for the app, it claimed that Facebook’s policies on data use were not being violated, but we had no way to confirm whether that was true. Once data passed from the platform to a developer, Facebook had no view of the data or control over it. In other cases, developers asked for permission to get user data that their apps obviously didn’t need — such as a social game asking for all of your photos and messages. People rarely read permissions request forms carefully, so they often authorize access to sensitive information without realizing it.

At a company that was deeply concerned about protecting its users, this situation would have been met with a robust effort to cut off developers who were making questionable use of data. But when I was at Facebook, the typical reaction I recall looked like this: try to put any negative press coverage to bed as quickly as possible, with no sincere efforts to put safeguards in place or to identify and stop abusive developers. When I proposed a deeper audit of developers’ use of Facebook’s data, one executive asked me, “Do you really want to see what you’ll find?”

The message was clear: The company just wanted negative stories to stop. It didn’t really care how the data was used.

[...]

“The best way I can describe it is, having a diaper on and never changing it. And just sitting in that diaper the whole year.”N.Y. Jet, Brandon Marshall. Speaking of last season’s disastrous 5 -11 record